Not to derail... but I have a kingwin esata/usb external drive case and a 7200 rpm sata drive inside... using an esata cable I patch it to an esata port on my case which is patched to my motherboard with a normal sata cable... 8gb of data is trying to move across and it's taking forever. I thought that sata drives were at minimum capable of humming along at 1.5gb/s... shouldn't this have taken at most 10 minutes? it's been 15 and the window tells me it will take another hour. I've never had transfers take this long... what could be holding this up?

@TehNachoI had the odd Linux version mount external FAT32-drives (USB sticks) with some crappy mount parameters that it would have been quicker to write the data on the HD with my own hands - yes, literally.

The Voice of Doom:@TehNachoI had the odd Linux version mount external FAT32-drives (USB sticks) with some crappy mount parameters that it would have been quicker to write the data on the HD with my own hands - yes, literally.

So if your happen to use Linux..

Oh, operating system is XP Pro. I lost track of how much longer it took, but it was a while. I did a transfer of about .97 gb in about 8 minutes right after wards though.

8GB of data shouldn't take an hour over USB 2, let alone eSATA. But then again, the only machines I've seen where the eSATA was actually used tended to crash and bluescreen and not mount the drives until reboot and other weird sh*t.

So, in short, I have no idea, but you'd be faster taking the side off the case and plugging the HDD directly into a regular SATA port

The Voice of Doom:@TehNachoI had the odd Linux version mount external FAT32-drives (USB sticks) with some crappy mount parameters that it would have been quicker to write the data on the HD with my own hands - yes, literally.

So if your happen to use Linux..

Oh! Hey! Thanks! I have this problem! Haven't had the chance to look it up yet.

I'm most likely buying a new computer this week, so there's no point in fixing it until I get the machine and install my new distro.

I had been running Kubuntu 6.06 on my poor machine with a flawed motherboard (which doesn't like most RAM), and then installed 8.04 which my poor system couldn't hack (256MB RAM not so good). I installed the Xfce desktop (which I'm running right now, but things are a little flaky and probably slower than when I ran Kubuntu 6.06).

I'll probably want to go back to Kubuntu once I get my upgrade. Anyone running Intrepid Ibex? Is it pleasant to use? I had a bit of a hard time getting over 8.04's Vista-like look.

Yes, yes, I know I can install several desktops, but I like to keep my system minimal. I guess some of that would be moot if my system was running a lot faster, though...

Nother question-is there some way to autorun a key combination at startup of windows? Like a batchfile or something.. (vista)? Once my OS is passed the authetication I always like the fingerprint reader for scrolling, but I don't know of any way to enable it other than a keycombo (which I mapped to a pen flick) and I don't know how to get that to run at startup.

geekybroadOh! Hey! Thanks! I have this problem! Haven't had the chance to look it up yet.

Try mounting the external FAT drive without the "sync" option, i.e. with "mount -o async".But you'll have to remember to umount the external device manually before removing it; sometimes a lot of the writing happens only delayed at the time of umounting - at least it did sometimes with my SuSEs.

I just encountered Firefox 3 and discovered that they broke file upload so you can't type in a filename. Apparently as a matter of policy this bug will never be officially fixed. Is there any fix? In the short term I'll probably go back to v2. Any better browser suggestions? Another non-negotiable requirement is the ability to turn off javascript.

CPU question: Which is "better", a core 2 quad q6600, or a core 2 duo E8500? They are the same price, so maybe they're pretty much equal? I'm doing a lot of transcoding lately, plus some gaming, if those are important things to know.

gayb:CPU question: Which is "better", a core 2 quad q6600, or a core 2 duo E8500? They are the same price, so maybe they're pretty much equal? I'm doing a lot of transcoding lately, plus some gaming, if those are important things to know.

It really depends on what you do. For games, the E8500 will be better. For the transcoding, and anything involving video/audio editing, the Q6600 will be better. For most desktop stuff, you won't notice a difference, unless you're a very heavy multitasker.

The E8500 will run cooler and use less power. Personally, I'd go with the Q6600, but I'm a freak.

She worked fine last night -- absolutely fine. Wife and I watched an episode of Heroes, I browsed the web, and just like always I turned off the monitor and walked away when I went to bed.

This morning I turned on the monitor and hit a key to bring the compy back to life and. . . nothing.Nothing.

When I hit the power button I get brief power to the motherboard and drives; I hear the CD drive cycle up and the hard drives begin to spin, all the fans come on, and then everything shuts right back down. After a few seconds the computer attempts to power up again but invariably just shuts right back off without so much as a how-do-you-do.

It has been years since I've really diagnosed any computer problems so I'm very rusty. Would anyone care to hazard a guess?

TwistedIvoryIt has been years since I've really diagnosed any computer problems so I'm very rusty. Would anyone care to hazard a guess?

First suspects: mainboard, power supply (and maybe, maybe CPU; I'm not quite sure anymore what my PC did after my Athlon turned into smoke due to me being an idiot).

First thing is to open the case and look where all that smoke comes from ;)Well, if you lack the magical smoke, check if the CPU fan is working, if there are scorch marks or if a capacitor has grown fat.Or remove the dead rat that's shortening pins on the PSU-mainboard connector.

General rambling:With ATX, it's the mainboard that tells the power supply "dude, gimme some juice"; looks like your board can't make up its mind for some reason.If you have a spare PSU, try that one in case it's not the board or any of the other components that has issues.

Wow, the internet looks so much different without all my adblock filters. But not better. Louder. How does anyone stand it? It's kind of nice to go back to unfiltered internet temporarily just so one can appreciate things like adblock.

gayb:Wow, the internet looks so much different without all my adblock filters. But not better. Louder. How does anyone stand it? It's kind of nice to go back to unfiltered internet temporarily just so one can appreciate things like adblock.

I work in a small office, and still the twits at work won't let us install Firefox.

Web pages at work are always an experience. Wow.... is THAT what that web page really looks like?

Today I purchased a inexpensive portable media player, a Sylvania deal. It was about 60 dollars for a 4gb model.

After letting it charge I powered it down and plugged it into my computer to start putting files on it. I then unplugged and found that some files (which it advertises as being able to play) would not work. I intended to remove them because they appeared to cause the player to crash. I plugged it in and windows told me that it did not recognize the device. I plugged it into a different USB port, and it worked fine, until I unplugged it again. Now, windows simply will not recognize it plugged into any of my USB ports at all. I constantly get the error message and am invited to trouble shoot but I'm not getting anywhere. There are no drivers, it's supposed to be as simple as a drag and drop.

I was wondering if there was another trick to getting Windows to recognize that the folder is there for me to put the files in and to remove the files from. When it was working windows assigned it drive letters I: and J: (why two?) and now that it is not working windows is not assigning it any drive letters.

Fortunately, it has an expansion slot for microsd so I have my fingers crossed that worse comes to worse I just use the expansion slot and not the internal memory... but if I could use both it would be triple bonus word score.

After trying all 12 of my computers USB ports I found one that after three tries worked again... so I'm pretty much going to put as much as I can on it while it's working... but still, if any of you have any advice for creating this volume so that it's always accessible, I am totally all ears.

Um, seconded. The crappiest media players I ever had always had problems syncing, but higher quality players never had any. You might want to check to see if the player has a USB mode or something, too. If it doesn't, get a real player from tigerdirect. Sansa doesn't make sh*t anymore--their early players were worthless, but I've got both 4gb and 8gb models (for super cheap), and they're rock solid.

N. S. Radieaux:Do I need to defrag the chunk of hard drive on an Intel dual-bootin' Mac that's filled with Windows XP?

If its formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS, yes you do.You can do this by right clicking (control clicking) the Bootcamp partition (should be on your Mac desktop) and selecting Get Info. The file type should be listed under 'General' and next to Format.

I thought I could live with the difficulty in transferring files, but I could not live with the 1.5 hour battery life. I returned it and spent the money on an oil change. Somewhat anti-climactic if you ask me.